People Skills

Speaking of friends, this Sunday, August 7th, 2011 is National Friends Day! Send your friends and family a blessing by sharing the movie May You Be Blessed
Rekindle your inner light or help brighten someone else's day. This beautiful movie is about joy, gratitude, appreciation, and kindness.

Communication is the foundation of all human interaction — and the basis of all training programs. From team building and leadership to customer service and supervisory training, communication is a fundamental skill that should be integrated into all types of training.
Whether communication is being addressed directly or indirectly in your training program, lay the groundwork for skill development with SkillBuilders: 50 Communication Skills Activities. This collection of activities addresses all 3 learning domains (cognitive, affective, and behavioral) and involves participants directly in the learning process through its interactive approach.

Uses for SkillBuilders: 50 Communication Skills Activities

The exercises are basic enough to include in any training program that incorporates communication skills, including those for customer service, sales training, and supervisory skills. A handy applications matrix matches the activities with 8 important communication topics. Many activities have more than one application:

This activity collection is available as a digital download in Adobe Acrobat PDF or the traditional 3-ring binder version. Both formats are fully reproducible.Click here to visit HRDQFind this tool at HRDQ store

What makes people act the way they do? There’s much debate about what drives human behavior. But one thing is certain – research proves that personality plays a major role in how we act when given complete freedom to do so.

Understanding personality style is important because it plays a role in all facets of organizational life, from leadership and teams to communication, selling, and time management. What’s My Style is a quick and accurate training tool for identifying personality styles, and it can be used by all individuals, including employees and managers. Based on the well-known personality theories of Marston and Jung, What’s My Style measures an individual’s preference for one or more four basic behavioral styles: Direct, Spirited, Considerate and Systematic. With this knowledge, individuals can better understand their behavior, the behavior of others, improve people skills, and effectively manage interpersonal relationships.

Learning Outcomes

Pinpoint one of four style preferences.
Discover how style affects behavior.
Recognize the strengths and weaknesses of each style.
Learn how to interact with different styles.

Theory and Development
The power behind What’s My Style and the HRDQ Style Series products lies in the simple but effective model for understanding human behavior. Based on the proven personality theories of Marston and Jung, the model identifies two basic dimensions of personal style: Assertiveness and Expressiveness. Assertiveness is the effort a person makes to influence or control the thoughts or actions of others. Expressiveness is the effort that a person makes to control his or her emotions and feelings when relating to others. Combining the two dimensions results in a four-quadrant model with four unique personal styles: Direct, Spirited, Considerate, and Systematic. The simplicity of the HRDQ Style Model is easy for trainers to facilitate and memorable for employees and managers to apply.
Uses for the Assessment
What’s My Style is appropriate for anyone to use for both personal and management development. The assessment can be used as a standalone training assessment, or it can be incorporated into a more comprehensive training program. It makes an effective foundation component for a variety of soft skills training topics, including communication, leadership, team building, and supervisory skills.

If you are familiar with the MBTI or DiSC assessments, you will find that What’s My Style is a practical and easy-to-use alternative.

How It Works

What’s My Style starts with an 18-item self assessment that takes approximately 10 minutes to complete. Individuals assign a total of 5 points between pairs of adjectives, dividing the points according to how much they believe each adjective describes their behavior. Scoring the assessment reveals a “My Style Profile” and a dominant preference for one or more four personal styles: Direct, Spirited, Considerate, and Systematic.
If you are planning to use What’s My Style in a classroom training session, we recommend you allow approximately 1 hour for interpretation of scores, topic discussion, debrief, and action planning. The What’s My Style Facilitator Guide includes everything you need to lead a successful training session from comprehensive background information and activities, to reproducible handouts and even a professional PowerPoint presentation. The Facilitator Guide also offers an easy-to-follow workshop outline that expands What’s My Style into a 2-hour program.

What to Order
What's My Style is available in both Online and Print Versions.
The Online Version is an excellent choice for enterprise-wide training or audiences that are geographically dispersed. It offers 24/7 access, streamlined distribution, and instant scoring. Each Online Assessment includes personalized reporting, full-color charts, interpretive information, worksheets, and action planning.
The Print Version is ideal for facilitators who prefer to oversee scoring and administration of the assessment, if you don’t know who the participants will be before the class begins, or if your learners do not have easy access to computers. It includes pressure-sensitive forms for scoring to aid manual tabulation. The accompanying Participant Guide includes interpretive information, worksheets, and action planning.
Go to HRDQ:Find this tool at HRDQ store

Learning to Listen is an effective communication assessment for management development training that measures listening skills, increases awareness of effective listening behaviors, improves listening skills and promotes active listening for better personal and work performance.

Learning to Listen Second Edition

Statistics show that people remember only half of what they hear, even moments after they’ve heard it. Surprising? The fact is that although most of us like to think we’re good listeners, almost everyone needs to improve their listening skills. Research shows that when people improve their listening skills, there is an increase in morale, safety, quality, sales, and productivity, as well as a decrease in unnecessary turnover and absenteeism. In addition, employees with effective listening skills are more productive with new technologies, and organizations that listen to clients are rewarded with a competitive advantage.

Learning to Listen is a communication assessment that focuses on both the visible and invisible aspects of listening behavior and measures listening skill in 3 dimensions: Staying Focused, Capturing the Message, and Helping the Speaker. The training assessment also provides individuals with their Overall Listening Effectiveness Score.

What separates the Learning to Listen assessment from the competition? While other similar communication assessments identify listening style, Learning to Listen measures listening skills. Focusing on concrete behaviors allows participants to immediately take action on their listening strengths and weaknesses and create an action plan for improvement. The result is employees who are better equipped to handle customer complaints, negotiating contracts, manage teams, and more.
Find this tool at HRDQ:

The Neurolinguistic Communication Profile is an NLP assessment for management development training. Improves interpersonal skills and identifies a preference for auditory, visual, or kinesthetic sensory channels used to filter and communicate information.
In our personal lives, achieving rapport with another person –“hitting it off,” if you will – leads to friendship, or even love. In our business lives, rapport leads to clear communication, accurate exchanges of information, fewer conflicts and misunderstandings, better teamwork, and greater productivity.
The Neurolinguistic Communication Profile (NCP) is an assessment derived from Neurolinguistic Programming, an innovative and very useful model for understanding the largely unconscious behaviors and predispositions that influence human communication and determine whether we will achieve rapport with another person. The NCP identifies underlying patterns including sensory-based preferences (visual, auditory, and tactile/kinesthetic), and offers practical insights into how to communicate more flexibly and effectively with others, regardless of their preferences.

In a very real way, the NCP serves as a guide for reaching rapport quickly with people whose communication “styles” differ from one’s own. It can serve as a game-changing centerpiece for training on topics including management, coaching, teamwork, and sales.

Learning Outcomes:
Identify personal communication preference.
Recognize communication preferences of others.
Communicate more effectively with others who communicate differently.
Discover how to increase productivity and motivation.
Learn how to exchange information more accurately.Gain flexibility in striving to match another person’s communication style.
The Neurolinguistic Communication Profile helps individuals discover and be consciously aware of the ways of communicating and dealing with information. Knowing this preference enables individuals to learn how to adjust behavior to match or fit another person’s preferred modes.

One of the premises for Neurolinguistic Programming is that each of us filters our communication and thinking in systematic and learnable ways. Research shows that this filtering process occurs during sensory intake. Each of us has a preference for taking in information, organizing it in our heads, and communicating information to others around us. This preference is based on the habitual and systematic use of our primary sense organs — literally our eyes, ears, and body.
The model of neurolinguistic communication in the NCP identifies preferences along three dimensions:
Preferred Sensory Modality
Preference for taking in and attending to sensory information: Visual, Auditory, or Kinesthetic
Preferred Thinking Style:
Way of organizing sensory information in your head or mind: Serial or Parallel
Preferred Mode of Expression:
One’s predominant preference for expressing and producing sensory information: Visual, Auditory, or Kinesthetic
Uses for the Assessment:

The Neurolinguistic Communication Profile can be used as a standalone training instrument, or it can be incorporated into a more comprehensive program on communication or leadership. It also makes an effective component in training programs for a variety of topics, including coaching, management, and supervisory skills.
How It Works:

The Neurolinguistic Communication Profile starts with a self assessment that takes individuals approximately 20 minutes to complete. Individuals respond to 65 items relating to communication.The result are scores in each of the three dimensions: Preferred Sensory Modality, Preferred Thinking Style, and Preferred Mode of Expression. Combining these results produces an Overall Communication Profile.
If you intend to use the Neurolinguistic Communication Profile in a classroom training session, we recommend you allow approximately 90 minutes for interpretation of scores, topic discussion, debrief, and action planning. The Neurolinguistic Communication Profile Facilitator Guide includes everything you need to lead a successful training session from comprehensive background information and activities, to reproducible handouts and even a professional PowerPoint presentation. The Facilitator Guide also offers an easy-to-follow workshop outline that expands the Interpersonal Influence Inventory into a half-day program. Go to HRDQ to get this toll for your team: Click here to visit HRDQ

Ron Gutman: The hidden power of smiling

Leadership Unlimited Profile

Removing Barriers to Your Potential
Roger R. Pearman, R. Daniel Parks, Barry Phillips, and Marcus C. King
The business pages of the world’s newspapers are filled with stories about managers and executives who suddenly self destruct. Individuals who were once considered to be successful ultimately fail, either ending up in a dead-end career or let go by their once seemingly loyal organization. This phenomenon is called Derailment. Just as a train falls off of its tracks, this breakdown is never intentional, and it almost always causes considerable damage. The good news is that derailment can be predicted – and even prevented – when managers are given the right resources.

The Leadership Unlimited Profile is a new assessment that helps managers to develop the behaviors that will help to ensure their success. Based on more than 20 years of research, it provides specific, targeted feedback on those behaviors that severely limit effectiveness, including:
Organizing Behavior,
Relationship Behavior,
Learning Initiatives Behavior,
Emotional Behavior,
Career Management Behavior.
The assessment serves as an “early warning” tool by providing quick insights into the critical areas of performance, identifies the skills sets needed to reach the next level, and establishes benchmarks to help people take charge of their development.
Learning Outcomes:
Measure five key career behaviors and 12 scales of behaviors.
Understand the management skills needed to maintain and ensure success.
Learn how to predict problems that can cause career derailment.
Pinpoint development needs to avoid derailment.
How to develop and align critical competencies.
Identify Career Accelerators, Neutralizers, and Blockers.
Create an individual personal development plan.
How It Works:
The Leadership Unlimited Profile is an online self assessment that takes approximately 30 minutes to complete. Leaders respond to 90 different items that address the five scales and 12 domains that make up the Profile. If you are planning to use the assessment for classroom training, we recommend you allow approximately 1 – 1 ½ hours for interpretation of scores, debrief, and action planning. The Leadership Unlimited Profile also includes a step-by-step training outline for a one-day workshop. lEARN MORE at HRDQ:

Eat That Frog

"Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day."
— Mark Twain

Eat That Frog
We are in the middle of the first quarter of the year. This year, you may want to get organized, simplify your life, as well as learn to focus on priorities and get more done in less time. The answer is Brian Tracy’s book Eat That Frog book and movie. Enjoy this 2 minute movie that is loaded with unconventional wisdom and tips to stop procrastinating and propel you to reach your 2011 goals.
Eat That Frog Movie Link :

#1 secret for great relationships...
Enjoy this short inspirational movie about the secrets to building great relationships. In business and in our personal life, the relationships we create are absolutely critical to our success. Watch this movie now:

Quotations about People

The total history of almost anyone would shock almost everyone. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody. ~Benjamin Franklin

What is the most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine. ~Susan Sontag

You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door. ~Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, 1887

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. ~Winston Churchill

A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man. ~Arthur Miller

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

Those who are quite satisfied sit still and do nothing; those who are not quite satisfied are the sole benefactors of the world. ~Walter Savage Landor

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. ~Winston Churchill

I don't know that there are haunted houses. I know that there are dark staircases and haunted people. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch. ~Walt Whitman

If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others. ~Francois duc de la Rochefoucauld

A hundred men together are the hundredth part of a man. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

I've met so many people, often the scum of the earth, and found them, you know, quite decent. I am an uncomfortable stranger to moral indignation. ~W. Somerset Maugham

Freaks are the much needed escape from the humdrum. They are poetry. ~Albert Perry

A man never knows how to say goodbye; a woman never knows when to say it. ~Helen Rowland

In general, of course, a stranger who tries to get you into an automobile is anything but noble, and in general a person who quotes great American novelists is anything but treacherous, and in general a man who says you needn't worry about money, or a man who smokes cigarettes, is somewhere in between. ~Lemony Snicket

His voice was as intimate as the rustle of sheets. ~Dorothy Parker

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. ~Abba Eban

Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood? Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank? ~Walt Whitman